Two men carry a coffin during a march to remember victims of overdose deaths in Vancouver in 2020. Overdoses are just one health risk that disproportionately affects men, along with preventable chronic illnesses, suicide and others.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Mark Holland is Canada’s former minister of health, the former leader of the government in the House of Commons, the former chief government whip and the former executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation’s Ontario Mission.
The trend in men’s health is moving in the wrong direction, and the cost is staggering. It’s not just the lives of the people we love that are at risk; it’s also draining our economy and overwhelming our health care system. The conditions and outcomes driving this crisis are largely preventable, yet we continue to treat the symptoms rather than confront the root causes.
We cannot build enough hospitals or hire enough doctors and nurses to keep pace with the rising tide of chronic illness and mental health issues. Our most powerful tool is prevention, and too often it is our least considered one. Nowhere is this more evident – or alarming – than when it comes to the health of Canadian men.
A new report from the Movember Institute of Men’s Health reveals that more than two in five Canadian men will die prematurely – before the age of 75 – from largely preventable causes. While a portion of these deaths are attributable to conditions like cancer and heart disease, there is a growing, disconcerting trend in Canada that chronic illness isn’t the only battle men are facing with their health.
Between January and June of 2024 alone, men accounted for 72 per cent of deaths caused by accidental opioid toxicity, and 64 per cent of opioid-related hospitalizations in Canada. Suicide remains the fourth-leading cause of death among men and occurs at three times the rate seen in women.
This crisis isn’t only about biology; it’s deeply cultural. Sixty-one per cent of men report feeling pressure to “tough it out” or hide their pain. Harmful social norms continue to equate masculinity with stoicism – defining strength as the ability to silently endure, to shoulder hurt invisibly, or to numb pain altogether.
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Former minister of health Mark Holland in 2023.BLAIR GABLE/Reuters
This resonates personally. In the lead-up to the 2011 federal election and the aftermath of losing my seat, I wanted to appear strong. I feared that speaking about the mental-health challenges I was experiencing would make me appear weak or frail. I wanted my family, friends and especially potential employers to see me as strong, so I suffered alone. I didn’t seek help, and it almost cost me my life.
Outdated ideas of strength are not making us more resilient – they’re fuelling a health crisis. If we want to stop unnecessarily losing the men we love, we need a cultural shift. That means reframing how we talk about men’s health and how we design our health policies.
In 1999, Canada introduced a national women’s health strategy, which served as a catalyst for advancements in women’s health. While there is still more work to do, the strategy helped align health system stakeholders and signalled the importance of gender-responsive care.
Canada would similarly benefit from the development of a national men’s health strategy – one that prioritizes improving mental-health literacy, equips health care workers to better engage men, advances targeted research and scales gender-informed programs through a Canada-wide Men’s Health Centre. Together, these efforts would help the health care system listen more closely to men, support them without judgment and address the unique barriers they face. These are clear, actionable steps that would lead to measurable improvements.
Other countries have demonstrated what is possible. Ireland launched the world’s first National Men’s Health Strategy in 2008. Since then, Irish men’s life expectancy has increased by nearly three years – from 76.8 in 2008 to 79.6 in 2022 – and male suicide rates have declined. These outcomes weren’t driven by breakthrough technologies, but by targeted strategies focused on prevention, outreach and cultural change.
At the core of a national strategy is the imperative to invest in prevention. Our health care system is under strain. If we continue to respond only to illness instead of preventing it, we will remain trapped in a cycle we cannot afford. In 2024, Canada spent an estimated $12.4-billion treating avoidable cases of just five major health issues disproportionately affecting men: coronary heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer, colorectal cancer and suicide. The only sustainable path is upstream – stopping illness before it begins.
The solutions to save countless lives and billions of dollars are within our grasp. There’s no ribbon to cut or monument to point to. It will take time, and it will initially be invisible. But we know what works. We can create a future with fewer preventable deaths, lower health care costs and vastly increased productivity.
Canada has the knowledge, tools and capacity to lead this transformation. What we need now is the public will to act. We must start a national conversation – one that places prevention at the foundation of our health care system and reimagines what it means to care for men’s health.